For those of us who love factorio's gameplay, but wish there were more of a challenge. If you want to feel a constant pressure to work fast and efficiently, a danger that you might ultimately fail, then this mod is for you. Also adds some incentives to build multiple distant bases connected by trains.

Life Pods

Your spaceship suffered a catastrophic failure in orbit around this fertile planet. Hundreds of crew are clinging to survival in low orbit, aboard the ship's few lifepods. You are the repair and rescue robot, and it's your job to keep them safe until help arrives.

Every so often, one of the orbiting life pods will be damaged and require assistance in the form of a particular item from the game, e.g. steel plates. The pod will crash land somewhere on the map, and from the moment it lands you will need to feed it the ingredient it requires at a sufficient rate to keep the people safe. If a pod lacks the resource it needs, it will begin taking damage and eventually its population will start to die.

Difficulty, Mode, and Settings

The game can be played in two normal modes: rescue and rocket.

In rescue mode, a rescue ship is coming after a certain period of time; your goal is to keep as many humans alive until the rescue arrives as possible. If you don't want to commit to a 20 hour factorio game, play a 4 hour rescue-mode game.

In rocket mode no one knows of your ship's demise and interference from the planet's atmosphere prevents you sending a signal. You must launch a satellite into orbit to send an SOS signal. Your score is the number of people who died when you send the rocket!

In addition to the normal modes there is infinity mode, where the pods just keep coming for ever and ever.

The game's difficulty controls the life pods' frequency, distance, consumption rate, and required items. It can be set to increase according to the number of players. Beware: all that is at all balance-tested is 1-2 players, Normal and Hard.

Quick Start mode gives you a jumpstart, for those who don't like the first hour or so of the game. You essentially skip that part of the game: you start with all basic (red only) techs unlocked as well as two chests full of iron, copper, belts, etc. Life Pods start demanding advanced goods correspondingly earlier.

Preparing for Life Pods

You will get warning a little while before each life pod lands. First you will learn what it needs, then later where it will land, and then finally you will learn exactly when it's coming. Build Radars to increase the lead time of all three warnings. When the life pod crash lands it will destroy everything underneath it. Don't stand under a falling spaceship.

Maintaining Life Pods

Each life pod works just like a regular assembling machine, with a single recipe turning its needed ingredient into Repair Points (don't try to change the recipe). The pod consumes Repair Points at a regular rate, and if it has none left it begins taking 1 damage per second. Each pod begins with 10 humans aboard; every time the pod loses 10% of its health (1000HP), a human dies. Pods with excess Repair Points will consume them faster and heal themselves, but dead humans cannot be repaired.

Later life pods will require more advanced materials, require more resources per second, and land further away than earlier ones.

Press "H" to see a summary of your life pods.

Stabilizing Life Pods

You can now research and build a "Life Pod Stabilization Module." By giving one of these to your humans, they can gradually repair the fundamental problem with their pod. After a long time (4 hrs), they will become fully stable and stop needing further repair.

Life Pod Benefits

Each life pod provides a small amount of power as well as a speed bonus: all buildings within a medium radius of a life pod work at double speed. This encourages you to build separate parts of your base around each life pod.